Month-End Review Checklist

Checklists page with close-style task templates

Use this month-end review workflow to move through banking, reconciliation, receivables, payables, reports, and backup/export steps before you treat a period as reviewed.

When To Use This

Use this page when you are closing a month, reviewing a client file, preparing financial statements, or checking whether routine accounting work is complete before reporting.

Before You Start

  • The correct company is active.
  • Bank and credit card activity has been imported or entered through the normal workflows.
  • Customer invoices, payments, vendor bills, checks, and journal entries are entered through the source pages that fit the work.
  • You know the month or period you want to review.

Steps

  1. Confirm the active company before you review anything.
  2. Open Banking and review pending bank and credit card transactions.
  • Assign accounts and vendors where needed.
  • Confirm only the rows you are ready to post.
  • Leave unclear items pending until you can review them.
  1. Open Reconcile and complete bank and credit card reconciliations for the period.
  • Match or clear transactions carefully.
  • Resolve differences before finishing the reconciliation.
  • Print or review the reconciliation report after posting.
  1. Review open receivables.
  • Check invoices that remain open.
  • Apply customer payments that have been received.
  • Run receivables aging if the report is available.
  1. Review open payables.
  • Check bills that remain unpaid.
  • Review checks or payment records entered for the period.
  • Run payables aging if the report is available.
  1. Review the Ledger for manual journal entries that affect the period.
  • Confirm accruals, reclasses, owner entries, and adjusting entries.
  • Confirm any intended reversing entries use the correct reversal date.
  1. Run core reports from Reports.
  • Start with Trial Balance to scan account balances.
  • Review Balance Sheet for as-of balances.
  • Review Income Statement for the period.
  • Use General Ledger or Account Detail to investigate unusual balances.
  1. Use report drilldown before making corrections.
  2. Make corrections through the source workflow whenever possible.
  • Use invoices for customer billing corrections.
  • Use bills or checks for vendor/payables corrections.
  • Use banking for bank transaction classification.
  • Use journal entries for accountant adjustments that do not belong to a source workflow.
  1. Export or save the reports your firm keeps with the period workpapers.
  2. Use Checklists to track review tasks that should be repeated every month.
  3. Review backup/export expectations for the company before major cleanup, import, or transfer work.

What Happens Next

The month-end review gives you a repeatable path for finding missing activity, wrong classifications, open AR/AP items, reconciliation issues, and report balances that need attention.

  • Reviewing a checklist does not post accounting activity.
  • Reports read posted data; they do not correct balances by themselves.
  • Corrections should be made in the workflow that owns the original transaction when possible.

If Something Looks Wrong

What You See What To Check What To Do Next
A report difference is going straight to a journal entry Whether the source transaction explains the difference Review the source transaction before posting an adjustment
Reconciliation is ready to finish while bank activity is still missing Whether all known statement activity has been imported or entered Add or review missing bank activity before finishing
Aging report totals look incomplete Whether invoices, bills, and payments have all been entered Complete the source workflows before relying on aging reports
Reports show the wrong company Whether the active company matches the review file Switch to the correct company and rerun the reports
Closed-period history looks messy Whether a correction or reversal workflow is available Use supported correction workflows instead of deleting history